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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4465 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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All this plus you look cooler. I felt like a complete dork when I was riding in a car putting my seat belt on and everyone else was just freeballing it (in another country of course, with a lower standard of safety).

ABC man -- Always Be Cool

I've always thought that the core idea of coolness is not caring what other people think in the moment.

Coolness is associated with freedom and relaxation and confidence yes. So caring less about what others think is usually cool, but the neurotic person dutifully buckling seatbelts for a 5 minute pickup jaunt is not cool. (not to say they aren't cool in general, just in this specific moment. they could very well be cool to give a moving eulogy when a drunk driver ends the merry ride early for anyone not wearing a seatbelt)

I've used some adjectives to stack the deck unfairly here of course, because this pup would be cooler than a try-hard wannabe that would like to buckle seatbelt but avoids doing so because they care so much about what other people think.

There's something about the fact that the doing (seatbelt) is uncool and the actively-non-doing (unbuckling to fit in) is double-uncool and the passive-non-doing (jaunt) is the cool thing.

Additionally: consider proportionality of safety-ism. Teen wearing a helmet for a razor scooter is uncool. Neil Armstrong triple-checking industrial buckles is very cool. (source: my opinion). Whether wearing a seatbelt is cool or not depends on which reference class a car-ride feels like.

Strongly agreed. Cool people aren't doing what makes them look cool, they are doing what they feel like doing. The things they do become cool because the person is cool, not the other way around.

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